Do Not Aggravate Your Children

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting for those who belong to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly. Children, always obey your parents, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged. Colossians 3:18-21

NONE OF US set out to aggravate our children. But deep sighs, slammed doors, and disgruntled expressions sometimes reveal that’s exactly what we’ve done. When we rage with angry rants and enforce more control than is necessary, when we belittle our kids or mock them, they might eventually do what we want them to do, but they will feel conquered, not trained; they will become discouraged, not disciplined.

Of course, the reason we sometimes parent this way is that we are sinners parenting other sinners. We have agendas we want our children to cooperate with —like getting out the door on time or getting a job done properly. We enjoy being right, and we want to be respected. But our motives are always mixed because our selfless love for our children is infected with self-centeredness. When our selfish desires meet up with our children’s selfish desires, it is a recipe for harsh words and hurt feelings.

Paul says, “Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone” (Colossians 4:6). He’s encouraging us not only to saturate our interactions with our children with grace, but also to carefully weigh how our words will impact them. We must be slow to anger and slow to speak. We need the grace that we’ve received to flow through us, and we need wisdom from above to work its way through us so that rather than aggravating and alienating our children, we encourage and affirm them.

Lord, I so often point out the behaviors in ________ that don’t reflect your grace and love while tolerating those same behaviors in myself. Please work in me the humility to ask for forgiveness when I’ve been harsh and unkind. Help me to be as concerned about my own need to grow in graciousness as I am concerned about the ways that ________ needs to grow and change.